Brian Zimmerman and I are pleased to announce the recent publication of our law review article through Capital University Law Review. It is entitled The Revolving Doors of Family Court: Confronting Broken Adoptions and is available at 40 Cap. U.L. Rev. 437.

The N.Y.C. family court is made up of many stakeholders from the legal and child welfare communities. Undeniably, all stakeholders approach this work with the best of intentions to achieve positive outcomes for the children who come through the doors of family court. Moving children to permanency, whether through return to a parent or through an adoption, is an important goal. Our article arose from our daily work in the trenches which suggested to us, that while many adoptions are successful, there are many children, the exact number of which is unknown, returning through the revolving doors of family court as a result of broken adoptions. During the last few years, city wide discussions have properly centered on correcting inefficiencies in the adoption process, and we are not suggesting that efforts and discussion toward that end should not occur. To the contrary, we believe that focusing on the issues identified in this article will prompt discussions that will help improve the long term outcomes for children who are adopted and to continually evaluate the efficacy of that goal on a case by case basis. For it is the shared responsibility of the many service providers and disciplines involved in these children and teenager’s lives, both pre- and post-adoption, to acknowledge the large number of children and teenagers who are returned to the system through the revolving doors of family court, as well as their each parties’ role contributing to children returning. Only then can a commitment be made to modify or eliminate the conditions which lead to the broken adoptions.

We are sending the cite to this article to you as you have a particular interest in and have made various contributions to the field of child welfare, advocacy and policy.

We hope you enjoy reading the article and look forward to engaging in future discussions in this area to work toward finding a solution to limit the revolving doors of family court. Please let us know if you would like further information or would like to meet about this subject.